Grossman's Estate

Citations

• 263 Pa. 139
• 106 A. 86

Syllabus

<p>Divorce — Foreign divorce as affecting property rights in husband’s estate — Widow’s exemption — Estoppel.</p> <p>1. A foreign divorce against a wife in no way affects the wife’s right in the husband’s egtate in Pennsylvania, where it appears that the wife was never in the foreign jurisdiction, that she was not properly served with process, was not represented by counsel and that the cause of action did not arise in'the foreign jurisdiction.</p> <p>2. Where a husband and wife execute articles of separation by which they mutually renounce all rights in each other’s estates, and thereafter the husband goes to a foreign jurisdiction and secures a divorce without lawful service on his wife, and without her being within the foreign jurisdiction or represented by counsel, and the husband then returns' to Pennsylvania and marries another woman who has full knowledge of all the circumstances relating to the separation and divorce, and the man then dies, the second wife cannot claim the widow’s exemption in his estate, although the first wife could not claim it because of the articles of separation. The children of the man by his first wife are entitled to the whole estate.</p> <p>3. In such .a case the lack of knowledge of the second wife as to the legal effect of the divorce in Pennsylvania, and the belief of the husband that the decree was effective in Pennsylvania, will not estop the heirs of the deceased husband from questioning the foreign divorce and the subsequent marriage with the second wife. The recognition of the deceased of the second wife as a wife did not invest her with a legal interest in his estate until it was made to appear that he was legally divorced from his first wife.</p>